Murder in the Gunroom, H. Beam Piper [ebook reader color screen .txt] 📗

long as both of you ate at the same table. He’d have just died, an unimpeachably natural death.” He turned to Ritter. “Dave, I’m going upstairs; I want to get out of this damned coat of mail I’m wearing. While I’m doing it, I want you to call Carter Tipton, at the Jarrett place, and Humphrey Goode, and Mick McKenna, in that order. Tell Goode to get over here as fast as he can, and come up to my room; tell him we have to consider ways and means of implementing my suggestion to him.” XXI

In the month which followed, events transpired through a thickening miasma of rumors, official communiques, journalistic conjectures, and outright fabrications, fitfully lit by the glare of newsmen’s photo-bulbs, bulking with strange shapes, and emitting stranger noises. There were the portentous rumblings of prepared statements, and the hollow thumps of denials. There were soft murmurs of, “Now, this is strictly off the record⁠ ⁠…” followed by sibilant whispers. The unseen screws of political pressure creaked, and whitewash brushes slurped suavely. And there was an insistent yammering of bewildered and unanswered questions. Fred Dunmore really had killed Arnold Rivers, hadn’t he? Or had he? Arnold Rivers had been double-crossing Dunmore⁠ ⁠… or had Dunmore been double-crossing Rivers? Somebody had stolen ten⁠—or was it twenty-five⁠—thousand dollars’ worth of old pistols? Or was it just twenty-five thousand dollars? Or what, if anything, had been stolen? Was somebody being framed for something⁠ ⁠… or was somebody covering up for somebody⁠ ⁠… or what? And wasn’t there something funny about the way Lane Fleming got killed, last December?

The surviving members of the Fleming family issued a few noncommittal statements through their attorney, Humphrey Goode, and then the Iron Curtain slammed down. Mick McKenna gave an outraged squawk or so, then subsided. There was a series of pronunciamentos from the office of District Attorney Charles P. Farnsworth, all full of high-order abstractions and empty of meaning. The reporters, converging on the Fleming house, found it occupied by the State Police, who kept them at bay. Harry Bentz, of the New Belfast Evening Mercury, using a 30-power spotting-scope from the road, observed Dave Ritter, whom he recognized, wearing a suit of butler’s livery and standing in the doorway of the garage, talking to Sergeant McKenna, Carter Tipton and Farnsworth; the Mercury exploited this scoop for all it was worth.

On the whole, the Rosemont Bayonet Murder was, from a journalistic standpoint, an almost complete bust. There had been no arrest, no hearing, no protracted trial, no sensational revelations. Only one monolithic fact, officially attested and indisputable, loomed out of the murk: “… and the said Frederick Parker Dunmore, deceased, did receive the aforesaid gunshot-wounds, hereinbefore enumerated, at the hands of the said Jefferson Davis Rand and at the hands of the said David Abercrombie Ritter⁠ ⁠…” and “… the said Jefferson Davis Rand and the said David Abercrombie Ritter, being in mortal fear for their several lives, did so act in defense of their several persons⁠ ⁠…” and, finally, “… the said Frederick Parker Dunmore did die.”

The Evening Mercury, which sheet the said Jefferson Davis Rand had once cost the loss of an expensive libel-suit and exposed in certain journalistic malpractices verging upon blackmail, promptly burst into print with an indignant editorial entitled “Trial by Pistol.” The terms: “legalized slaughter,” and “flagrant whitewash,” were used, and mention was made of “the well known preference of a certain notorious private detective for the procedure of habeas cadaver.” The principal result of this outcry was to persuade an important New Belfast manufacturer, who had hitherto resisted Rand’s sales pressure, to contract with the Tri-State Agency for the protection of his payroll deliveries.

Then, at the other end of the state, the professor of Moral Science at a small theological seminary caught his wife in flagrante delicto with one of the fourth-year students and opened fire upon them, at a range of ten feet, with a 12-gauge pump-gun. The Rosemont Bayonet Murder, already pretty well withered on the vine, passed quietly into limbo.

Summer, almost a month before its official opening, was already a fait accompli. The trees were in full leaf and invaded by nesting birds, the air was fragrant with flower scents, and the mercury column of the thermometer was stretching itself up toward the ninety mark.

They were all outside, where the long shadow of the Fleming house fell across the lawn and driveway, gathered about the five parked cars. The new Fleming butler, a short and somewhat globular Negro with a gingerbread-crust complexion and an air of affable dignity, was helping Pierre Jarrett and Karen Lawrence put a couple of cartons and a tall peach-basket into Pierre’s Plymouth. Colin MacBride, a streamer of pipe-smoke floating back over his shoulder, was peering into his luggage-compartment to check the stowage of his own cargo, while his twelve-year-old son, Malcolm, another black Highlander like his father, was helping Philip Cabot carry a big laundry hamper full of newspaper-wrapped pistols to his Cadillac. Pierre’s mother, and the stylish-stout Mrs. Trehearne, and Gladys Fleming, obviously detached from the bustle of pre-departure preparations, were standing to one side, talking. And Rand had finished helping Adam Trehearne pack the last container of his share of the Fleming collection into his car.

“I see Colin’s about ready to leave, and I’m in his way,” Trehearne said. He extended his hand to Rand. “No need hashing over how we all feel about this. If it hadn’t been for you, that offer of Kendall’s would have had us stopped as dead as Rivers’s had. Five hundred dollars deader, in fact.”

Stephen Gresham, carrying a package-filled orange crate, joined him, setting down his burden. His wife and daughter, with another crate between them, halted beside him.

“Haven’t you got your stuff packed yet, Jeff?” Gresham asked.

“Jeff’s been helping everybody else,” Irene Gresham burst out. “Come on, everybody; let’s go help Jeff pack! You’re going to have dinner with us, aren’t you, Jeff?”

“Oh, sorry. I have some more details to clear up;